Witness accounts: rioting in AcreMy eight-year-old daughter - who has kidney problems - was dragged by her hair and one man tried to push her through the railings on the windows. She was screaming, we were struggling to free her from his grip. The attacks lasted from 20:00 until midnight. During that time the police stood by and did nothing. I rang to ask for help and they told me they weren't a taxi service. They only showed interest after about five hours, by which time most of the mob had gone.

Shattering a 'National Mythology'"The supreme paradigm of exile was needed in order to construct a long-range memory in which an imagined and exiled nation-race was posited as the direct continuation of 'the people of the Bible' that preceded it," Sand explains. Under the influence of other historians who have dealt with the same issue in recent years, he argues that the exile of the Jewish people is originally a Christian myth that depicted that event as divine punishment imposed on the Jews for having rejected the Christian gospel.

"I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land - a constitutive event in Jewish history, almost like the Holocaust. But to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country. The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until the 20th century. From this, in effect, the whole book was born: in the realization that Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled."

If the people was not exiled, are you saying that in fact the real descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah are the Palestinians?

"No population remains pure over a period of thousands of years. But the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its descendents. The first Zionists, up until the Arab Revolt [1936-9], knew that there had been no exiling, and that the Palestinians were descended from the inhabitants of the land. They knew that farmers don't leave until they are expelled. Even Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the second president of the State of Israel, wrote in 1929 that, 'the vast majority of the peasant farmers do not have their origins in the Arab conquerors, but rather, before then, in the Jewish farmers who were numerous and a majority in the building of the land.'"

Eyad El-Sarraj: Catastrophe for GazaThe secretary-general rightfully condemned Palestinian rocket fire at civilian targets in Israel. Such rockets are morally wrong and strategically inept. Yet the blockade that Israel has clamped on 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza is a collective punishment that harms men, women and children who have no power to control those firing the rockets. Rather than turn Gazans against Hamas, the blockade's effect has been a humanitarian catastrophe that alienates Gazans young and old from both Israel and the West. Even I, a practicing psychiatrist for decades and a longtime advocate of coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis, am having trouble coping with the hardships to which we are subjected.

Greece asks Israel for teargas grenadesGreek authorities contacted Israel this weekend with an urgent request for teargas grenades to be used against the wave of riots that broke out in the country last week, Athens police reported on Sunday.

Ostali linkovi:Poverty in Haiti spawns child slaveryHaiti is one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere and the poverty has fuelled restavek, a system of domestic servitude of hundreds of thousands of children that is tantamount to modern-day slavery. The country's government acknowledges that child slaves exist but says it is part of the culture.

Iraq - Another Hiroshima? Investigative reportFor example, he claims that between the First and the Third of March 2002, in Afghanistan, a similar warhead was used. This is a declaration that cannot remain without verification and it is a call for everyone to carry out accurate investigations, to work together, with the necessary knowledge and ability. It would be terribly serious if, in the most absolute silence, an atomic bomb has been used. Radioactivity does leave a trace.

Phyllis Bennis: Understanding the U.S.-Iran CrisisSince the 1979 over throw of the US-backed shah of Iran, the accusation of Iran being a "state supporter of terrorism" has been a hallmark of US policy. The State Department's 2007 Country Reports on Terrorism … states that "Iran remains a threat to regional stability and U.S. interests in the Middle East because of its continued support for violent groups, such as HAMAS and Hizballah, and its efforts to undercut the democratic process in Lebanon, where it seeks to build Iran's and Hizballah's influence to the detriment of other Lebanese communities." There is no evidence and little detail provided, beyond the broad claim that Iran is providing "extensive funding, training, and weapons" to those groups. The report does not acknowledge that both the most important "Palestinian group with leadership in Syria," Hamas, and Hezbollah in Lebanon are important political parties that have been democratically elected to majority and near-majority positions in their respective parliaments. Both, while certainly maintaining military wings, also provide important networks of social services, from clinics and hospitals to schools, daycare centers, food assistance and financial aid to the impoverished, disempowered, and (in the case of Hamas in Gaza) imprisoned populations of Lebanese and Palestinians. Some of the actions carried out by the military wings of Hamas and Hezbollah have in fact targeted civilians in violation of international law, and thus might qualify as "terrorist" actions. But the majority of their actions have been aimed at illegal Israeli military occupations: of south Lebanon in the case of Hezbollah, and of Gaza and the West Bank in the case of Hamas.

The Other FrontI write this by flickering light, a fat candle at my right elbow and a kerosene lamp on my left. We get only three or four hours of electricity every couple of days, often from 1 to 5 a.m. Still, the bill has to be paid. To do that, you must wait in a total of eight lines in two different buildings. You almost never get through the whole process without hearing an uncouth bark as your turn comes up: "This desk is closing; come back tomorrow." Due to the electricity shortage, the power department won't open new accounts. Officially. But for $600 -- 15 times the normal fee and a fortune to Afghans -- you can get a meter installed anyway. A friend recently visited the jail in Urozgan Province, north of Kandahar, where he found 54 prisoners. All but six were untried and uncharged and had been languishing there for months or years. [...] Across the street from my cooperative there used to be a medical clinic. When it moved to a new facility, gunmen in police uniforms set up a checkpoint outside the empty building. Our inquiries revealed that they were the private guards of a senior government official. Their purpose? To serve as a graphic warning to the building's owners not to interfere in what would follow. A few days later, some friends of the official's moved in. The owners had no say in the matter, no recourse. This government official is one of the men the United States helped put in power in 2001 and whom the international community has maintained and supported, no questions asked, ever since.

More Americans Believe in the Devil, Hell and Angels than in Darwin's Theory of Evolution-- 80% of adult Americans believe in God - unchanged since the last time we asked the question in 2005. Large majorities of the public believe in miracles (75%), heaven (73%), angels (71%), that Jesus is God or the Son of God (71%), the resurrection of Jesus (70%), the survival of the soul after death (68%), hell (62%), the Virgin birth (Jesus born of Mary (61%) and the devil (59%).-- Slightly more people - but both are minorities - believe in Darwin's theory of evolution (47%) than in creationism (40%).-- Sizeable minorities believe in ghosts (44%), UFOs (36%), witches (31%), astrology (31%), and reincarnation (24%).